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Nasa delays InSight Mars mission until 2018

Nasa has announced that InSight, its latest mission to Mars, has been delayed by two years to 2018.

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The delay is down to a leak in one of the spacecraft's compartments, with the launch now set for 5 May 2018. The craft will land on Mars in November of the same year. The cost of the delay is currently "being assessed".

The leak is in the spacecraft's seismometer, called SEIS, as instrument measures ground movements "as small as half the radius of a hydrogen atom". According to Nasa, SEIS will "maintain a high degree of vacuum around the sensors through rigours of launch, landing, deployment and a two-year prime mission on the surface of Mars".

InSight's goal is to examine the evolution of the Red Planet. "The science goals of InSight are compelling, and the Nasa and CNES plans to overcome the technical challenges are sound," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for Nasa’s Science Mission Directorate. "The quest to understand the interior of Mars has been a longstanding goal of planetary scientists for decades. We’re excited to be back on the path for a launch, now in 2018."

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The InSight mission is part of Nasa's aim to send humans to Mars, a mission the space agency said remained "on track". Nasa is also work on other spacecraft, including the Mars 2020 rover and the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission (Maven), a probe that will explore the Martian atmosphere.

The European Space Agency, meanwhile, is set to launch it ExoMars mission on 14 March as part of an ongoing effort to find life on Mars.